They tracked her for a half mile, out to the interstate, away from the Wal-Mart, into a Best Buy. She disappeared into the store.
“What do we do?” Flowers called.
“Shrake? Jenkins?” Lucas called. “Can one of you go in?”
“Got it,” Shrake said.
But Shrake had been a block away and almost got clipped by a cell-phone user when he tried to make an illegal turn. The parking lot was jammed and he didn't want to dump the car at the door; she might spot it. By the time he got parked, and got out and crossed the lot without running, and got through the front door, he was too late.
She was walking directly toward him, toward the exit. He continued toward the new-release movie rack, and when she'd gone out, he called, “She's out, she's out…”
“Got her,” Lucas said, watching from across the street. “What'd she do in there?”
“Don't know. Want me to ask around?”
Lucas thought, then said, “Ah… fuck it. Catch up with us. She's back in her car.”
“She's heading for the Wal-Mart,” Jerrold called five minutes later. “Tell Del to put Coombs in the store.”
Lucas and his group tracked her right into the Wal-Mart parking lot, past the main entrance, to the Garden Shop. “She's going in the back side, through the Garden Shop,” Lucas called to Del.
“I'm heading that way… I'm heading that way,” Del called back. Then “I got her,” and “Lucy is headed for the phones.”
Widdler watched Coombs from halfway across the store. Watched her for three or four minutes, looking for anybody who might be a cop. Coombs was wearing another muumuu, a blue one this time. She was a heavy woman, big gut, chunky around the hips, a potato-eating prole, a leftover hippie. She stood just inside the entrance, looking at the bank of three yellow pay phones.
Widdler, in Women's Clothing, watched for another minute. Nothing moving. She saw Coombs looking at her watch. If Davenport was behind this, Widdler thought, he could have tapped the phone, but they wouldn't have let Coombs come in her by herself, would they? Widdler took the cell phone out of her pocket and dialed. She watched Coombs pick up the pay phone. Coombs said, “Hello,” and Widdler said, “Hang up, and go two phones down. I'll call you on that one in two seconds.”
Coombs hung up the phone, moved down two. Stared at the phone-didn't call anyone, didn't look at anyone. Widdler punched in the number. Coombs answered and Widdler said, “I don't have two hundred thousand dollars. I could get eighty thousand now and pay you the rest later, but I want the original of the letter.”
“Why would you pay me the rest later?” Coombs asked. “If I didn't have the letter?”
“Because you could cause me a lot of trouble by talking to the police, even without the original,” Widdler said. “You'd be in trouble yourself, for destroying evidence, but I don't know how crazy you are. I'd pay you, all right, but I don't have the cash now.”
“I don't know,” Coombs said.
Widdler: “You don't have any time to think about it. Say yes or say no, or I'll hang up.”
“Ah, God. You'd pay me?”
Coombs sounded exactly like a stoned-out hippie, hoping against all expectation that something good might happen to her. “Yes. Of course. I've already started getting the money together.”
“All right,” Coombs said. “But I'll go to the cops if you don't pay me the rest…”
“Just tell me what you want to do.”
“Here's what I've worked out,” Coombs said. “I don't trust you and I want to look at the money. So I want to do it in a semipublic place where I can scream for help if you try to hurt me, but where we'll have a little privacy. I'll scream, I really will.”
“Where?”
“There's a farmers' market today in St. Paul, downtown, across from Macy's…”
“No. That's too open,” Widdler said. “The ladies' room at Macy's, there'd still be people around…”
“But we couldn't say a word, I couldn't look at the money…” Coombs whined.
“The Macy's parking ramp in St. Paul?” Widdler suggested.
“That's too scary… Do you know where Mears Park is? Where the art studios are?”
“That'll be good, that'd be perfect,” Widdler said. “One o'clock?”
“I'll scream if you do anything,” Coombs said.
“Then I go to trial and you won't get a penny,” Widdler said.
Another long pause. Then, “Okay.”
“Bring the originals. I'm not bargaining anymore. Bring the originals or I'm gone,” Jane Widdler said.
With Jerrold in the air, and Flowers, Shrake, and Jenkins on the ground escorting Widdler back to her shop, Lucas and Del helped Coombs out of the muumuu and then out of the ballistic vest and the wire. “Jeez, that thing is hot,” she said. She'd told them about the phone conversation on the way out of the store. “She was behind me?”
“Yeah. And I was behind her,” Del grunted. “We were cool.”
“Think she'll come?” Coombs asked.
“I hope,” Lucas said.
“What happened with the phone?” Del asked.
“We don't know, but she didn't use her own and she switched phones inside,” Lucas said. “I think she bought a phone at Best Buy.”
“She's no dummy,” Del said.
“But we sold her,” Lucas said, grinning at the other two. “Lucy, you were great.
You could be a cop.”
She shook her head. “No, I couldn't. Cops pretend to be friends with people, and then they turn them in. I couldn't do that.”
The key, Lucas told Coombs, was to get Widdler on tape acknowledging the quilt fraud, that she knew of the Donaldson killing… anything that would get her into the slipstream of the killings. Once they had her there, circumstantial evidence would do the rest.
“Get her talking,” Del said. “Get her rolling…”
Mears Park was a leafy square, one block on each edge. The buildings on three sides were rehabbed warehouses, combinations of apartments, studios, offices, and retail, including the studio of Ron Stack, the artist that Gabriella had dated. The fourth side was newer, offices, a food court, and apartments in brick-and-glass towers.
“As soon as she's in the park, we'll have you come around the block in the car, since she's seen the car,” Lucas told Coombs. “Shrake will pull away from the curb, and that'll leave a parking space open for you.”
Del pointed at an unmarked cop car, already in the parking slot. Lucas pointed out the route: “Pull in, then walk down the sidewalk over here. Del's gonna be on the other side of the park, back through the trees, closing in, as soon as we know where she's at. Flowers and I will be behind the doors in Parkside Lofts. We'll be invisible, but as long as you're on the sidewalk, we'll be right across the street from you. Sit on this bench…” He pointed. “There's gonna be a guy on the bench eating his lunch.”
“Pretty obvious,” Coombs said.
Lucas shook his head: “Not really. When people are suspicious, they look for a bum pushing a shopping cart or a woman with a baby carriage, but a guy in a suit eating a peanut-butter sandwich and talking on a cell phone… Won't look at him twice.
Besides, as soon as you show up, he's gonna walk away. That gives you the bench.
Talk to her on the bench.”
“What if she doesn't want to talk there?” Coombs asked.
“Go with the flow-but as soon as you feel the slightest bit uncomfortable about anything, break it off,” Lucas said. “Anything, I'm serious. If you feel uncomfortable, you're probably right, something's screwed up. Get out. Scream, run, whatever. Get away from her.”
Coombs nodded, and started to tear up. “It'd be a shame if she got all three of us.”
“Don't even think that,” Lucas said.
Del said to Lucas, “Man, I'm getting the shakes. Bringing a civilian in…”
Lucas looked at Coombs. “What do you think, Lucy? We can call it off, try to get her to talk by phone.”
Coombs shook her head, wiped her eyes with her knuckles. “I'm a big chicken-if she looks at me cross-eyed, I'm runnin'.”